I remember the first time I thought about trying my hand in the wonderful world of advertising. I was broke, a month behind on the rent, the phone was threatened to be shut off, and I was trying to raise money for a documentary film on Chinese minority cultures.

Standing at the precipice I jumped head-first into the hell fire of advertising. With a reel of documentary pieces I had shot for mtv news and a music video under my arm, I made an appointment with Donny Deutsch, creative director of the then David Deutsch and Associates.

Within five minutes of sitting down and showing my reel, Donny came at me with all the piranha-like skills of a used-car salesman. By the time I walked out of his office I was directing a spec spot for Lears magazine, for free of course, but with the promise of future work. I was in.

Having no idea what advertising was all about other than the fact that I found it extremely interruptive, blatantly manipulative, and annoyingly pedestrian, I figured how hard could this possibly be when the benchmark was so low? It’s easy, I just pick up a camera and some friends and show up at Francis Lears’ Fifth Avenue apartment and document a high-brow female coffee klatch between her and four of her friends.

Amongst pictures of Francis with celebrities and dignitaries, I loaded mags on marble countertops and ran cable over Persian rugs.

Three hours later I wrapped my first commercial shoot. A success.

Twenty-four hours later I received rushes – they were all out of sync.

I quickly learned the first rule of advertising: cover your mistakes and keep bluffing. So I used the out-of-sync bits with camera flashes and leader, etc., and cut together a funky, non-linear, verite commercial.

Donny, unaware of the problems, loved it. This advertising thing was a snap. Of course it was a snap, I was dealing directly with the creative director, no client, no preproduction meetings, no re-edits, no bullshit, just the work.

Things would change. Over the next three years, working exclusively with Deutsch, I was slowly exposed to the insularity of the advertising industry. Quickly the nature of the dysfunctional relationship between the client, agency, production house and the mass populace reared its ugly head.

Directing television commercials was unlike anything I’d done before; none of my documentary or film experience could prepare me for the uniquely over-thought process of making ads.

One of the first things that struck me odd about the ad industry was that this trend-setting-based industry was still using the outdated, archaic platform of 3/4′ tape. It made me realize that there had to be a communication breakdown somewhere.

This aside, you then have to take into consideration that through the proliferation of advertising to its current state, an industry of people has been created who much prefer to impress and mimic each other than try to communicate with the mass populace.

This is understandable though when we all put so much time and effort into something that people don’t really want or much less appreciate. However cynical that may seem, it is the truth.

So why would anyone possibly want to be in advertising much less be a director?

Simple. You travel all over the world, meet interesting people, and shoot them.

The funny thing is that for the money they pay you they rarely actually utilize your full potential. In the elaborate system of checks and balances that have been created to insure that the advertising is executed to the predetermined specs, someone has forgotten the simple process of filmmaking.

Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we let the directors go wild every now and then and see what happens. After all, the only thing that I can see that seems to work in advertising is trust.